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Tuesday, December 06, 2005

The Baby Jesus Wars

It never fails. Once the nativity set at church is put out, the Baby Jesus War is on. You know what I mean. The struggle between those who believe that Baby Jesus must NOT be put into the scene until Christmas Day vs. those who believe that the scene is incomplete without him.

A few years ago someone tried to settle the dispute by using a set where the Baby Jesus is firmly affixed to the manager, all in one piece. Now we Calvinists should know not to underestimate the capacity of man (and woman) kind to continue a feud, but there is always hope. And so on it goes...the Baby Jesus is hidden by one faction in the drawer of the table on which the creche sits. Then He's liberated by the pro-Baby Jesus group. Back and forth, back and forth. At last on Christmas Eve the No-Baby Jesus faction gives it up and He gets to stay in the scene through Epiphany. At last, sweet unity among the bretheren and sisteren! Until next Advent.

When I was growing up we had a nice Italian-Renaissance style nativity set. It had a stable with real pieces of hay glued on it. The angel perched perilously on top of the pitched roof of the stable. My parents always set it out on my dad's black baby grand piano. Then the games began.

This wasn't just a Baby Jesus war--it was a war of all against all. There were four children in the family. Each one had a firmly fixed idea of how that scene should be arranged. As the oldest, I was always "neatening up" the work of my younger sister and brothers. Since I considered myself the "artistic" one, I strove for unity and symmetry of the figures.

My brothers would take the angel off the top of the stable (where I put her) and have her standing BEHIND the shepherds, off to the side. My sister would put the angel by Mary and Joseph INSIDE the stable. Since they were clearly WRONG, it was my duty to rearrange these figures several times a day. As the oldest I got to stay up a bit later, so I got the last word...until morning when the struggle began anew.

Looking back, I realize that there were a couple of agreed upon positions for the figures--Mary, Joseph, the Baby Jesus and the manger usually remained inside the stable. But everything else was disputed. Isn't that like some of the disputes today between and among our churches? Christians have some consensus about a few basic things--but then engage in constantly questioning the importance (or arrangement) of everything else. We're much more interested in disputing what we disagree about (where's that Angel? Hide the Baby Jesus!) than on celebrating what we believe in common (Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus and the Manger belong inside the stable).

The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles as well as the history of the church tell as that this is nothing new. If history is predictive of the future, we'll enthusiastically continue our Baby Jesus wars in some form or another until He comes again. Now...where's the Baby Jesus today?

Then there are the really (anal) purists who will argue that you should make a shepherds of magi decision. You can't put them together because they happen in different gospels. You have to decide, based mostly on what lectionary year it is, whether you will have a Luke nativity or a Matthew nativity. I'm not kidding--I've received criticism for my syncritistic creche.

When my kids were younger, we used to find the most glorious creatures in the nativity scene, witnessing the birth.

I'm talking about Big Bird, a Red M&M's guy, Woody from that Disney movie, Barbie, fairies,...we never knew exactly who would be there. It became a game to see how many different figurines we could find around the house to put in the manger scene, and the tableau kept changing every couple of days.

For years I had the Magi travel across the sanctuary toward the creche during Advent. Children seemed to enjoy watching the Magi make it to the manger by Christmas Eve. Biblically, the Magi should have arrived at the manger in January but we were in a hurry...

I haven't seen these baby Jesus wars in my congregations but at home the kittens move the creche figures around to fit their playful sense of the Christmas story. Most often the kittens paw the Wise Guys onto the floor.